30 Clubs in 30 Songs: Texas

This was a fun one for me. Knowing the exact city where this team plays (Arlington, just outside of Dallas), the tune here was molded after Pantera, one of my favorite bands when I was in high school. For the music, I threw in a solo like they usually did on their albums (no rhythm guitar part – just solo-bass-drums) and wrote a very active riff a la “5 Minutes Alone” for the chorus (That’s the part a lot of “groove metal” bands forget. They just kinda go “chunk cha-chunk chunk” and overlook the fact that those guys had some pretty serious chops). Oddly enough, this song proved to be more difficult to play on bass than guitar…

When it came to the lyrics and vocals, I must concede that I can’t sing/yell like Phil, so I didn’t even try. I still have a few entries left in this project and I kinda need my vocal cords for them, ya know? Instead, the Pantera-ness was focused on the words themselves. This is a song about “hey, look – this team is good now,” but I made sure to talk tough and use the word “power” a lot (you’d be surprised how often that word shows up in their songs). Overall, I’m very pleased with the results and I hope you enjoy this tribute to a band that completely blew away my teenage ears.